zen classics formative texts in the history of zen buddhism nov 2005

Zen Classics:
Formative Texts in
the History of Zen
Buddhism
STEVEN HEINE
DALE S. WRIGHT,
Editors
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Zen Classics
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Zen Classics
Formative Texts in the History
of Zen Buddhism
edited by steven heine and
dale s. wright
1
2006
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zen classics: formative texts in the history of Zen Buddhism /
edited by Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright.
p. cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents: The concept of classic literature in Zen Buddhism /
Dale S. Wright—Guishan jingce and the ethical foundations of Chan practice /
Mario Poceski—A Korean contribution to the Zen canon the Oga hae scorui /
Charles Muller—Zen Buddhism as the ideology of the Japanese state /
Albert Welter—An analysis of Dogen’s Eihei goroku /
Steven Heine—“Rules of purity” in Japanese Zen /
T. Griffith Foulk—Zen koan capping phrase books /
Victor Sogen Hori—Imagining Indian Zen /
Michel Mohr—Meditation for laymen and laywomen / David Riggs.
ISBN-13 978-0-19-517525-7; 978-0-19-517526-4 (pbk.)
ISBN 0-19-517525-5; 0-19-517526-3 (pbk.)
1. Zen literature—History and criticism. 2. Zen Buddhism.
I. Heine, Steven, 1950– II. Wright, Dale S.
BQ9264.2.Z455 2005
294.3'85—dc22 2004066287
987654321
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

Acknowledgments
We thank Cynthia Read and Oxford University Press for their inter-
est in the project. We are also grateful for the support provided by
our respective institutions in the preparation of the manuscript. Spe-
cial thanks go to several assistants who worked on the manuscript,
including Sandy Avila, Kelly Kuylen, Adiene Rodas, and Cristina
Sasso.
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Contents
Abbreviations, ix
Contributors, xi
Introduction: The Concept of Classic Literature in
Zen Buddhism, 3
Dale S. Wright
1. Guishan jingce (Guishan’s Admonitions) and the Ethical
Foundations of Chan Practice, 15
Mario Poceski
2. A Korean Contribution to the Zen Canon: The Oga
Hae Seorui (Commentaries on Five Masters on the
Diamond Su¯tra), 43
Charles Muller
3. Zen Buddhism as the Ideology of the Japanese State: Eisai and
the Ko¯zen gokokuron,65
Albert Welter
4. An Analysis of Do¯gen’s Eihei Goroku: Distillation
or Distortion? 113
Steven Heine
5. “Rules of Purity” in Japanese Zen, 137
T. Griffith Foulk
viii contents

6. Zen Ko¯an Capping Phrase Books: Literary Study and the Insight “Not
Founded on Words or Letters,” 171
G. Victor So¯gen Hori
7. Imagining Indian Zen: To¯rei’s Commentary on the Ta-mo-to-lo ch’an
ching and the Rediscovery of Early Meditation Techniques during the
Tokugawa Era, 215
Michel Mohr
8. Meditation for Laymen and Laywomen: The Buddha Sama¯dhi (Jijuyu¯
Zanmai) of Menzan Zuiho¯, 247
David E. Riggs
Appendix:
Pinyin–Wade-Giles Conversion Table, 275
Index, 281
Abbreviations
T Taisho¯ shinshu¯ daizo¯kyo¯ [Japanese Edition of the Buddhist Canon]
(Tokyo: Daizo¯kyo¯kai, 1924–1935).
Z Zoku zo¯kyo¯ [Dai Nihon zokuzo¯kyo¯] (Kyoto: Zo¯kyo¯ shoin, 1905–1912).
XZJ Xu zangjing (Taipei: Xinwenfeng, 1968–1970; reprint of Dai Nihon
zokuzo¯kyo¯).
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Contributors
T. GRIFFITH FOULK is professor of religion at Sarah Lawrence
College and co-editor-in-chief of the Soto Zen Translation Project
based in Tokyo. He was trained in both Rinzai and Soto Zen monas-
teries in Japan and has published extensively on the institutional
and intellectual history of Chan/Zen Buddhism.
STEVEN HEINE is professor of religious studies and history
and director of the Institute for Asian Studies at Florida Interna-
tional University. Heine has published numerous books and articles
dealing with the life and thought of Do¯gen and the history and phi-

losophy of Zen Buddhism, including Do¯gen and the Ko¯an Tradition:
A Tale of Two Sho¯bo¯genzo¯ Texts (1994), The Zen Poetry of Do¯gen:
Verses from the Mountain of Eternal Peace (1997), Shifting Shape,
Shaping Text: Philosophy and Folklore in the Fox Ko¯an (1999), Open-
ing a Mountain: Ko¯ans of the Zen Masters (2001), and Zen Canon:
Understanding the Classic Texts (co-edited with Dale S. Wright, 2004).
G. VICTOR SO
¯
GEN HORI, a former monk in the Daitokuji
branch of Japanese Rinzai Zen, is associate professor of Japanese re-
ligion in the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill University in
Montreal. He has published Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases
for Ko¯an Practice, a translation with commentary of the Rinzai Zen
monks’ handbook of capping phrases for ko¯ans (2003), and is active
in the Montreal Buddhist communities.
MICHEL MOHR presently works as a full-time researcher at
the International Research Institute for Zen Buddhism, Hanazono
University, with a position of professor. He is in charge of directing
the “Zen Knowledge Base” project initiated by Urs App. Mohr ob-
xii contributors
tained a doctorate in 1992 from the University of Geneva (Switzerland), where
he was working as assistant of the Japanese Department between 1987 and
1992. His publications include Trait sur Buisable Lampe du Zen: (1721–1792) et
sa vision de Treatise on the Inexhaustible Lamp of Zen: [To¯rei and His Vision of
Awakening], 2 vols. (1997).
CHARLES MULLER is professor, Faculty of Humanities, Toyo Gakuen
University (Japan). His publications include The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment:
Korean Buddhism’s Guide to Meditation (1999), and Patterns of Religion (1999)
[co-author]. He is also the founder and managing editor of the H-Buddhism
Buddhist Scholars Information Network ( />ϳbuddhism/) and Chief Editor of the online Digital Dictionary of Buddhism

( />MARIO POCESKI is an assistant professor of Buddhist studies at the Uni-
versity of Florida. His research focuses on the history of Buddhism in late
medieval China. Currently he is finishing a book on the history and doctrines
of the Hongzhou school of Chan. His earlier publications include Manifestation
of the Tatha¯gata: Buddhahood According to the Avatamsaka Su¯tra (1993) and Sun-
Face Buddha: The Teachings of Ma-tsu and the Hung-chou School of Ch’an (2001).
DAVID E. RIGGS is currently a researcher at the International Center for
Japanese Studies in Kyoto. He has taught at the University of California Santa
Barbara and the University of Illinois. He received his Ph. D. from the Uni-
versity of California Los Angeles, where his dissertation was entitled “The Re-
kindling of a Tradition: Menzan Zuiho¯ and the Reform of Japanese Soto Zen
in the Tokugawa Era.”
ALBERT WELTER is associate professor of religious studies at the Uni-
versity of Winnipeg, specializing in Chinese and Japanese Buddhism. His pre-
vious publications include articles on Chinese Ch’an, and a book-length study
of the Ch’an scholiast Yung-ming Yen-shou. He is currently preparing several
manuscripts for publication, including a translation of the Ko¯zen gokokuron.
DALE S. WRIGHT is David B. and Mary H. Gamble Professor of Religious
Studies and Asian Studies at Occidental College. His area of specialization and
research is Buddhist philosophy, particularly Hua-yen Buddhism and Ch’an/
Zen Buddhism. His publications include Philosophical Meditations on Zen Bud-
dhism (1998), The Ko¯an: Texts and Contexts in Zen Buddhism (co-edited with
Steven Heine, 2000), and Zen Canon: Understanding the Classic Texts (co-edited
with Steven Heine, 2004), as well as numerous articles in Philosophy East and
West, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, History and Theory, and else-
where.
Zen Classics
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Introduction: The Concept
of Classic Literature in

Zen Buddhism
Dale S. Wright
Zen Classics is a sequel to The Zen Canon, published by Oxford Uni-
versity Press, in which we began to explore the variety of influential
texts in the history of Zen Buddhism. In Zen Classics we continue
that exploration by shifting our primary focus from the Chinese ori-
gins of Zen to the other East Asian cultures where the Zen tradition
came to fruition in subsequent eras. Here we invite scholars doing
original research on Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Zen literature to
survey a single work or genre of works that, because of its power
and influence, has helped shape the Zen tradition and cause it to be
what it is today.
It has by now become clear to those of us studying the Zen tra-
dition of Buddhism that in spite of the powerful rhetorical opposi-
tion mounted against the written word, the volume, variety, and in-
fluence of Zen literature are enormous. Zen literature is one of the
primary ways in which the tradition communicates its teachings and
is perhaps the most important way that it extends itself into future
historical contexts. Zen texts come in a range of genres. Primary
among these are the “recorded sayings” of famous Zen masters; the
“transmission of the lamp” histories, which string together impor-
tant stories and biographies into a lineage structure; kung-an or ko¯an
collections, which evolved out of these earlier literatures and sought
to bring the teachings into finer focus; monastic codes enunciating
rules of conduct for the life of Zen monks and nuns; and a wide
variety of commentarial literature related to all of these primary gen-
res. From its early origins in the language of medieval China, Zen
literature spread to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, where it slowly
4 introduction
worked its way into the languages of those cultures, and subsequently into

virtually every language and culture in the world today. A few of these works,
by virtue of their transformative influence, have come to be regarded as clas-
sics, such as the Platform Sutra attributed to Hui-neng and Do¯gen’s Sho¯bo¯-
genzo¯.
What, then, is a classic text? Common sense presents us with several op-
tions. A classic text might be the original motivating statement of a tradition,
the earliest formulation of its truth. Yet we tend to use the word “classic” not
just for initial founding texts but for important subsequent writings as well.
Another option might be that classic texts illuminate the heart or the core of
a tradition, whenever in the history of the tradition it was written, and this
definition probably comes closer to the meaning we seek here. Yet, if we are
careful and honest in the way we examine the history of a tradition, we can
see that what practitioners within a tradition might regard as its heart or core
shifts significantly throughout its long life. The primary or most urgent point
in one era will become passe´ in the next, precisely because of the way it was
stressed in the earlier era. Traditions are fluid, fully historical in their way of
being, and over time become too complex to be reduced to a single core state-
ment.
So, pressing further, we might attempt to define a classic text as one whose
power or skill in evoking insight or persuasion transcends the era in which it
was written. This definition avoids the difficulty of placing the classic in the
epoch of origins of a tradition. This is important, since the identification of a
text with the past undermines its ability to be forceful in subsequent times. To
be a classic is to persist in the present setting, to be powerful now and not
simply at some moment in the past. This understanding of “classical” also
manages to avoid defining a classic text in terms of a timeless doctrinal position
that is not subject to the influences and turns of history. As we can now see,
all cultural artifacts are produced within a temporal and cultural context and
are therefore subject to the particular movements of that setting. But even
though no single doctrinal position will be adequate in all epochs of cultural

history, there are texts—those that have come to be regarded as classics—that
somehow manage to communicate forcefully and persuasively in historical
periods beyond the ones in which they were produced. Their ideological po-
sition is certainly not timeless, but their powers of communication seem to
carry on long beyond the typical shelf life of cultural products. They appear, in
other words, to evoke reflection, insight, and motivation not just in the setting
imagined by their authors but in some important way beyond that as well.
Designating a text a classic, therefore, is not just a statement about its
position in the past; it is more importantly a statement about how it fares in
the present, and in the series of previous “presents” that have arisen between
a text’s origins and the present moment. Calling something a classic means
that in addition to its having been important or powerful in the past, the text
introduction 5
can still wield power in the present. It is not so much that the text is, by virtue
of that power, “timeless,” because, first of all, there may very well have been
historical periods when it did not possess that capacity, and second, the idea
in the text or the segment of it that currently holds sway may differ significantly
from the idea or segment that once did. It would be better to say that a classic
text is “timely” because its timeliness consists in the fact that it can manage
to provoke insight in very different times even if the insight or the understand-
ing of it differs.
The classic therefore, exists in the variety of insights that it evokes in
different times and places. In a new and different setting, the function of a
classic text is not so much to preserve an original message as it is to speak
forcefully and pointedly to a new set of cultural issues. Although not as old as
the Buddhist tradition of which it is a part, the Zen portion of Buddhism has
come to be what it is today through lengthy processes of cultural evolution.
Zen institutions began with one set of concerns and motivations and quickly
transformed into others as they came to take a different and more established
role in China. And whatever concerns had motivated the Chinese creators of

Zen could not have been shared in exactly the same way by later Zen leaders
in other East Asian cultures. A classical text is classical precisely by virtue of
its power to speak effectively in new cultural and historical settings and to
address new and unanticipated concerns, rather than by virtue of its being
irrevocably moored in the past and in univocal meanings. And if each classic
text constitutes some kind of advancement for the tradition, then the tradition
as a whole certainly cannot be conceived in static and ahistorical terms. This,
at least, is the direction of understanding for the term “classical” that would
allow us to take advantage of the obvious strengths of contemporary historical
thinking.
Just as important, understanding “classical” in a way that is flexible and
open to change helps make it cohere with the Buddhist tradition, which
stresses the principles of impermanence and dependent origination. These
basic features of the earliest Buddhist worldview work against the static con-
ception of history that we tend to assume if we have not thought deeply about
it. They also make it possible for us to see that the principles of Buddhism
apply just as much to Buddhism itself as they do to other entities in the world.
Buddhism not only articulates the doctrine of impermanence, it is itself im-
permanent. What it is in any setting depends on a myriad of historical factors.
In fact, there is in the repertoire of Buddhist concepts one that captures our
conception of a “classic” very well. This is the Mahaya¯na concept of skill-in-
means, the idea that, in order to be effective and transformative in a wide
variety of social and historical settings, the teachings of Buddhism will need
to be flexible, malleable, and not inalterably fixed in meaning. And it has indeed
been true that in Buddhist history, the most successful and effective teachings
and texts have been those that appear to have the virtue of flexibility, those that
6 introduction
are open to be shaped in a variety of directions in order to meet the needs of
different people in unique situations and contexts. Classic texts are skillful in
this respect. They seem to be able to stretch themselves far enough to accom-

modate the demands of different times and do not therefore come to be inal-
terably associated with the particular issues and concerns at the time of their
original composition.
As we know from reading great Zen texts, however, Zen masters appear
to have been much less concerned about simply being Buddhist than about
establishing an atmosphere within which an awakening might take place. This
concern would be just as true for texts that articulate a stern, disciplinary atmo-
sphere of rule-following as it is for those Zen texts that mock such rigidity. It
is this diversity of literary approach that makes Zen texts so difficult to classify.
Some Zen texts, indeed some of the most famous, refuse to mean anything at
all. They provoke, they challenge, and they raise questions that can be answered
only through extraordinary insight. Indeed, it may very well be that the ques-
tion is the most basic form of Zen discourse, rather than pronouncements,
proclamations, or statements.
Moreover, some Zen texts feature comedy as a form of discourse that has
liberating effects. Comedy evokes and celebrates moments of freedom from
mental bondage, which was at times one way to articulate the goal of the
practice. Other Zen texts take a critical point of view; they ridicule artificial
conceptions of the practice and belittle forms of practice that aim at anything
short of full awakening. Sometimes these negative tracts function to make the
traditional language of the Buddhist tradition look stiff and shallow in com-
parison to the Zen language that demystifies and deconstructs them. Zen mas-
ters were, more than most Buddhists, enthralled with the power of language
to transform the mind, even if their criticism of ordinary language was dev-
astatingly pointed. These few examples of forms of discourse in Zen demon-
strate the refined focus that we find in its texts on the overarching concern for
liberating insight.
That the kinds of insight a single classic text evokes over its lengthy history
might change is a realization required by the study of both Buddhist history
and Buddhist thought. Zen practice has always entailed the practice of medi-

tation, although the form that this contemplative exercise takes has changed.
Textual meditation is certainly one such form, and it has been practiced by
serious Zen practitioners since the beginning of the tradition. In the context
of such practice, the primary goal of reading would not have been an accurate
interpretation in the sense of accord with the intentions of the original author.
The goal would have been awakening, and this would be made possible only
when the reader comes to see where he or she stands in the world by means
of the vision offered in the text. It is not necessary to decide whether the
meaning of the text resides in the author, or the original context, or the reader,
or his or her context, because the insight afforded by the text occurs always in
introduction 7
the interaction between those elements. In each case, the classic texts allow
the reader to see him or herself and what matters in light of the text, while
simultaneously the readers inevitably understand the text in light of their own
context.
The reading of classic texts in the Zen tradition inevitably included the
traditional practices of imitation and emulation. The texts themselves, and the
ideal figures represented in them, served for subsequent eras as exemplary
models for how practitioners should shape themselves. When the classics func-
tioned in this authoritative way, the reader was not so much a productive agent
acting on the text as someone who sought to appropriate what it had to say in
an open posture of listening and responsiveness. In this sense, the classic Zen
texts served as a factor favoring continuity and stability as practitioners in
various times and places would seek to fashion themselves out of meditative
dialogue with these same texts. In each case, however, practitioners would have
read differently, each in light of their own contexts and issues, and in their
interpretations they would have added something significant to the tradition.
Considered in this light, the Zen tradition would resemble an ongoing con-
versation between readers of the classic texts in a lineage of historical periods,
each adding to the tradition what the cultural situation in his or her time made

possible.
All the essays in this volume are written in the style of contemporary
historical inquiry. They seek to discover how each text or genre of texts came
to be what it is, and how each influenced the tradition to take the shape that
it did. Readers interested primarily in cultural history will find the essays to
be superb examples of this contemporary science. Other readers, however,
those interested primarily in Zen practice or its fundamental conceptions of
the self and the world, will wonder what this historical approach contributes
to their quest. Does the study of Zen history contribute to or distract from the
study of Zen as a spiritual inquiry? The question is important for readers to
ponder and, at the same time, to ask, why? Here are just a couple of thoughts
to get you started.
Most, although perhaps not all, of the great Zen masters mentioned in
these pages assumed the vital significance of Zen history. Understanding this
history in the form of genealogy, and referring to it regularly in dharma talk
of various kinds, these Zen visionaries understood how vital this form of self-
knowledge is, and that ignoring it entails great risks to the tradition. According
to the Buddhist principle of dependent origination, we understand what some-
thing is, including Zen, through our grasp of the lineage of factors that have
brought that something into being. The less we understand about the history
of anything, the more likely we are to assume that it has a fixed essence, that
what it appears to be right now is what it really is, always has been, and always
will be. The more we understand about the history of Zen, the more open our
minds will be to nuances and complexities in the tradition, and the more open
8 introduction
we will be to newly emerging possibilities for its future in our own lives and
beyond. Historical understanding helps to loosen our conceptual grip on
things; it allows us to see the reality in which we live as “impermanence,” and
in that way it restricts our natural tendencies toward rigid or dogmatic under-
standing. This openness of mind and historical sensitivity can be found in

profound ways in virtually all of the Zen masters whose innovations in Zen
conception and practice produced one of the most interesting traditions of
spirituality that the world has ever seen.
Does the study of Zen history contribute to the study of Zen as a spiritual
inquiry? Yes, clearly. But it would be unproductive and unfair not to pose the
opposite question offered above: Does the study of Zen history distract or
detract from the study of Zen as a spiritual inquiry? Listening attentively to
the Zen masters again, we would have to respond again in a qualified affir-
mative. Although historical study doesn’t necessarily detract from a Zen spiri-
tual quest, there is a sense in which it might do so. Perhaps most important
is that historical understanding might mistakenly be conducted as though it
were an end in itself, something that does not need to be set into a larger
context of its meaning for our lives. In fact it cannot be such an end, but rather
needs to serve a larger vision of the reality within which we live. If we lose
sight of that larger vision of the present, we engage in historical study as an-
tiquarian attachment to the past. Historical understanding can fulfill its mis-
sion only by looking through the past that is uncovered to its implications for
the present in which we live, and by pointing beyond the past to some new
future that the past will serve or illuminate. If the practice of Zen is meant to
enlarge our vision, to deepen our understanding of who we are and how we
are to live, then it will need to carefully consider the ways that historical study
of Zen is included within it. But that mindfulness is precisely what Zen practice
seeks to inculcate, and where it succeeds, the practitioner is likely to have a
profound sense of the importance of the tradition’s history. The opposite fail-
ure, although all too common in religious settings, is truly disabling—the
refusal to accept the truth of history, the inability to take its lessons into ac-
count, the perverse need to alter the historical record to maintain an ideology
that fears the facts. These are the risks of avoiding the historical study of Zen
in the context of its practice, and the reasons why the study of Zen history
cannot over time be excluded from the authentic study of Zen.

The essays chosen for this volume offer careful historical studies of texts
that have earned the right to be called classics. The texts are taken from dif-
ferent cultures and different historical periods and fall into a variety of Zen
genres. What follows is a brief introductory summary of the eight essays in
this volume.
introduction 9
Chapter 1. “Guishan jingce (Guishan’s Admonitions) and the
Ethical Foundations of Chan Practice”
Mario Poceski’s study of Guishan’s Admonitions, a ninth-century Chinese
Hongzhou Chan text attributed to Guishan Lingyou, a disciple of Baizhang,
sheds light on a dimension of this famously iconoclastic Zen tradition that
surprises Zen scholars, east and west. This interesting and unusual text, the
only Hongzhou school text discovered in the Dunhuang caves, places its pri-
mary focus on monastic discipline and the place of morality in Chan practice.
This emphasis contrasts sharply with the overall point of view that we associate
with Hongzhou Chan, whose best-known writings tend to disparage the con-
servative orientation of codes of monastic discipline and moral training. But
Guishan’s text is clearly a response to tension in the relationship between Chan
monasteries and the wider society within which they existed, especially the
larger political milieu which regularly cycled between support for Buddhist
monasticism and serious doubts about it.
As Poceski shows, Guishan’s Admonitions calls for serious reform to pu-
rify the moral and spiritual practices of monks, while simultaneously de-
scribing the monastic ideal toward which they ought to strive. Rejecting the
image of the Chan iconoclast, the Admonitions depict a Chan monasticism
that is largely indistinguishable from Chinese Buddhist monasticism as a
whole. Guishan’s image of the paradigmatic Chan monk is simply a good
Buddhist, and Poceski concludes by highlighting the pragmatic and realistic
implications of this position. Guishan’s Admonitions is therefore best under-
stood as a Chan attempt to place a realistic model of Buddhist monastic dis-

cipline before the minds of practitioners in order to provide them with actual
practices to guide their daily lives. Although this image has not been given
pride of place in Japanese or Western Zen in the modern period, we can cer-
tainly imagine historical circumstances arising in which Guishan’s text
might prominently reappear.
Chapter 2. “A Korean Contribution to the Zen Canon:
The Oga Hae Seorui (Commentaries on Five Masters on the
Diamond Su¯tra)”
Charles Muller’s essay offers insight into the working of a classic Mahaya¯na
su¯tra–the Diamond Su¯tra–within the Korean So˘n monastic community. The
Diamond Su¯tra, one of the most condensed and therefore easily accessible
Mahaya¯na classics, inspired dozens of commentaries in every Mahaya¯na Bud-
dhist culture. Muller’s essay analyzes Gihwa’s subcommentary on five classic
Diamond Su¯tra commentaries. In Gihwa’s text, therefore, we have three layers
10 introduction
of reflection: the original su¯tra, commentaries by five famous Chinese masters,
and Gihwa’s unifying vision that makes the Oga Hae Seorui coherent as a
functional monastic meditation tool. This text from Gihwa, himself the pre-
eminent Buddhist figure of his time, became the central conceptual training
tool in Soˇn monasteries and has retained that status for the past six centuries.
Muller’s essay shows how this text provided the conceptual core for Korean
So˘n, which avoided the provocative anti-textual histories that have defined Chi-
nese Chan and that surfaced periodically in Japanese Zen. Because the Dia-
mond Su¯tra addresses the prominent Buddhist theme of language and its re-
lationship to the nonlinguistic world, how practitioners have understood this
su¯tra makes an enormous difference in how linguistic practices are positioned
in the full range of Buddhist meditations. The influence and power of Gihwa’s
effort to collect the best Chinese Diamond Su¯tra studies, arranging and inter-
preting them for the purposes of Korean monastic training, qualifies the Oga
Hae Seorui for the status of a classic text itself.

Chapter 3. “Zen Buddhism as the Ideology of the Japanese
State: Eisai and the Ko¯zen Gokokuron”
Albert Welter’s careful study of Eisai, the founding figure of Japanese Rinzai
Zen, and his principal text, the Ko¯zen gokokuron, shows us how the twists and
turns of history establish the grounds upon which a text will either gain and
maintain power and influence or fail to do so. The Ko¯zen gokokuron was already
a classic text by the end of its own Kamakura period. It defined for the newly
emerging Zen sect, and for other Buddhists as well, how the monastic system
would position itself with respect to the state. The text outlined for monks and
for government officials the vital role Buddhist thought and practice played in
maintaining the moral and spiritual core of Japanese culture. To do this, of
course, it would need to focus heavily on the importance of Buddhist moral
precepts within the overall practices of Buddhism and to show how this moral
emphasis served the interests of the state. Against other Zen ideologies,
therefore, Eisai was conservative in allying Zen practice to broader social and
governmental concerns and was positioned in opposition to the antinomian
character of certain dimensions of the Chinese Ch’an heritage. When the re-
form tradition of “pure Zen” took hold in Tokugawa Japan, however, Eisai’s
standing, and that of the Ko¯zen gokokuron, would inevitably fall. The former
“classic” text was submitted to critique and fell into obscurity. Throughout his
analysis, Welter shows how the fate of the text is clearly linked to broader
historical developments, which either set the stage for its use and valorization
or undermine it. Perhaps, like Mario Poceski’s Guishan jingce, Eisai’s text
awaits a new era in which its themes will once again be pertinent to the central
concerns of Zen history.
introduction 11
Chapter 4. “An Analysis of Do¯gen’s Eihei Goroku: Distillation
or Distortion?”
Steven Heine takes up a So¯to¯ Zen text that has been instrumental in shaping
the tradition of Do¯gen Zen in order both to analyze what it is and to ask

whether it accurately summarizes Do¯gen’s Eihei Ko¯roku (examined in The Zen
Canon) or whether, in the process of distilling it, it actually distorts it. The
importance of the question is brought forth by Heine’s reminder that the texts
abbreviating the writings of Do¯gen were more influential than the texts from
which they were drawn. To get an interesting take on this issue, Heine asks
how the pattern of abbreviation stood in the traditions of Do¯gen and Ch’an/
Zen literature. Here he finds “minimalist expression” a powerful and impor-
tant theme, although in the end Heine concludes that linguistic expansion
rather than compression is a more adequate symbol of Do¯gen’s work. The
essay continues to survey the controversy in Japan over the accuracy of the
Eihei Goroku and concludes, with Ishii Shu¯do¯, that the Eihei Goroku is far from
a mirror image of Do¯gen’s original Eihei Ko¯roku. Whether that alteration
through the course of Zen history is a problem to be addressed by returning
to the original source, or instead is a perfectly appropriate sign of the imper-
manence and contextuality that Do¯gen so powerfully conceived, is the impor-
tant question that concludes Heine’s essay.
Chapter 5. “ ‘Rules of Purity’ in Japanese Zen”
In this essay, T. Griffith Foulk continues the research on the Chinese monastic
regulations genre that he had completed for The Zen Canon, here providing an
excellent overview of how Song-style Buddhist monasteries came to be estab-
lished in Japan through the extensive study and use of this genre of Zen lit-
erature. This body of literature, the “Rules of Purity” (C. qinggui;J.shingi),
established for Japanese Zen what it meant to be a monastery, and how, exactly,
an authentic monastery ought to be constructed, structured, and governed.
Given the significance of Zen monastic institutions in Japan from the Kama-
kura period down to the present, the importance of this literature for Japanese
culture generally is paramount. Because Chinese monastic codes continued to
develop from the Song through the Yuan and Ming dynasties, Zen monasteries
in Japan would periodically be compelled to rewrite the codes of monastic
structure to adapt to new influences from the mainland as well as new needs

and situations that had arisen in Japan.
The result of these extensive import and adaptation efforts is an impressive
corpus of literature, from early travelers such as Eisai, Enni, and Do¯gen down
12 introduction
to the contemporary Japanese debates on monastic practice that are affecting
the way “Zen centers” all over the world organize their activities. Through the
interesting histories told here, two theses stand out. One is Foulk’s well-
supported claim that neither the arrangement of “Chan” monasteries nor the
“rules of purity” that governed them were the exclusive inventions or posses-
sions of the Chan School of Chinese Buddhism. The other is that in spite of
the dominance of Mahaya¯na traditions of Buddhism in East Asia, pioneers in
the Chan tradition were part of a larger movement to revive strict monastic
regulations based on the Hı¯naya¯na vinaya codes. Both of these developments
are seen as having shaped Japanese monastic codes, including those produced
in Japan beginning in the thirteenth century.
Chapter 6. “Zen Ko¯an Capping Phrase Books: Literary Study
and the Insight ‘Not Founded on Words or Letters’ ”
G. Victor So¯gen Hori’s thesis in this essay—that Zen ko¯ans derive from an
ancient tradition of Chinese literary games—holds great promise for our
understanding of the origins and history of Zen practice. Zen phrase
books, Hori explains, should be understood as a subgenre of Zen ko¯an lit-
erature, but also as a category of texts that derives from the ancient Chi-
nese tradition of proverbs, sayings, and allusional poetry. In their Zen in-
stitutional setting, phrase books have two primary sources: the wordless
insight that is “not founded on words and letters,” and the tradition of Chi-
nese literary games. In this ancient poetic tradition, skilled poets would
challenge each other’s powers of memory and composition by presenting a
verse and challenging an opponent to recall the second line or follow the
allusion to another poem. This tradition can be traced to early Chinese
sources wherein the ancient Book of Songs, the Confucian Analects, and

early Taoist texts such as the Tao te ching would be pressed into playful, po-
etic use in literary games. Following Hori’s lead, one can see the connec-
tion between these games and the kinds of exchanges that are found in-
scribed in some of the most famous ko¯ans—both contain mysterious
language, both allude to profound traditions beyond what is occurring in
the present moment, and both lead to a flash of insight, something like a
“mind-to-mind transmission.” The use of Zen phrase books as sources of
“capping phrases” for the kind of mental discipline that develops in mon-
asteries is revealed by Hori’s analysis to be part of a much older tradition
than Zen, and a very significant genre of East Asian literature.